Bug#69311: PROPOSAL] Finishing the /usr/doc -> /usr/share/doc transition.
On 23 Aug 2000, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Woody shall have a full /usr/share/doc/ when released, while
> allowing for partial upgrades from potato all the way, under the
> plan.
The "partial upgrades" issue is a myth. As I said, we have never
guaranteed that *every* conceivable partial upgrade will work (because
of versioned dependencies on newer packages). Very often, upgrading a
package forces the upgrade of some others, and this is not considered
as a bug or a deficiency of the system. Do we agree on this?
> I think this is not the time to start getting impatient, and
> saying that 79% completion is as good as done. (one or two percent,
> perhaps, but 21% -- I don't think so)
I'm not saying 79% is as good as 100%, I'm saying that a 79% of
converted packages after the upgrade from slink to potato is good
enough to consider a modification of the original plan, by letting the
two transitions which still have to be done to overlap:
1. Packages use /usr/share/doc. This transition is 79% complete. We
expect it to be complete by the time woody is released.
2. Packages do not create any symlinks in /usr/doc.
This transition is 0% complete, because it has not even started.
I think many users will appreciate that we start the second transition
now, most of them already know that an arbitrary mix of packages from
stable and unstable is not always guaranteed to be problem-free, and
I'm sure that most of them want to get rid of the symlinks as soon as
possible.
In either case I would like ask some important questions:
When the Technical Committee made their decision, was there a proposal
to have symlinks in potato and no symlinks in woody which they could
have chosen, or the only option in the voting ballot involving
symlinks was what we call the "original plan"?
If, as I think, the second is true, I could say that what they
*really* decided (since the T.C. does not really decide anything but
from a set of multiple choices) was to use symlinks during the
transition period. Let's say that the policy group decides that we
want potato to be the only "transition distribution", would this
contradict a decision by the T.C. and would be void?
In other words: Could it be that this may only be solved by a General
Resolution?
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